Meet the Frankenstein of Golf: Tiger Woods
By Gary Clemente,
Contributor
I'm not ashamed to admit it, but I used to be a fan of those
early Roger Corman creature features. They're easy to remember.
They were black and white movies done in the Fifties and they had
names like "The Incredible Shrinking Man," "The Creature
From the Black Lagoon," "Attack of the Fifty-Foot Crab
Creatures," and a spin-off I would have liked to have seen,
"Attack of the Fifty-Foot Shrimp."
Generally,
the movie would open up with some real creepy music (usually by an intoxicated
organ player) and some dopey man, woman or kid would be out in the middle
of the forest in the dead of night - alone for crying out loud, either
picking berries or looking for a lost friend, until they stop dead in
their tracks and then look up at the most horrible thing they've ever
seen and then CUT.
It's safe to say that whatever the heck it was out there had some serious
munchies and gobbled up the poor schnook like a double-cheeseburger with
extra fries. After an agonizingly long wait, we finally get to see a close-up
shot of the creature during the last five minutes of the movie.
All this scary golf stuff has me going to bed at night with
my nine-iron.
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Usually it resembled a man in a rubber suit that looks like a caterpillar
with octopus suckers all over him dipped in molten lava. (A later version
of the movie might have had the creature arriving at home asking his wife
what was for supper. "I hope you don't mind leftovers, dear" she'd
say. "I made a nice quiche out of that lost truck driver you found
in the woods.")
Consider this too, if those same movies were still being made today,
here's what a current script might look like:
FADE IN: TWO MEN, CHET AND BOB, ARE PLAYING GOLF ON THE 13TH TEE. BOB
HITS HIS SHOT INTO THE ROUGH.
BOB: Golly, that wasn't a swell shot at all.
CHET: Yes siree, Bob. It looks like it went into that giant 500-foot
deep sand trap over there.
BOB: Oh, gosh, darn. That will be one tough shot.
CHET: Just keep your eye out for anybody wearing a rubber suit with
octopus suckers all over it.
BOB: (THEY BOTH CHUCKLE) You're a real card, Chet.
BOB APPROACHES THE SAND TRAP WHILE SOME OF THE MOST GHOULISH ORGAN MUSIC
EVER PLAYED FADES IN. BOB LOOKS INTO THE BLACK, BOTTOMLESS SAND TRAP AND
THINKS HE SEES HIS BALL. AS HE REACHES IN FOR IT, HE GASPS IN HORROR AS
SOME HIDEOUS MUTANT CREATURE THAT LOOKS LIKE TIGER WOODS' COVERED IN MOLTEN
LAVA AND DEION SANDERS' CLOTHES, SPRINGS OUT OF THE SAND TRAP
WOODS: Mmmm, yummy. This is better than having Phil Mickelson a la mode.
FADE TO BLACK.
ANNOUNCER: Coming soon to a theater near you. Tiger Woods is "The
Bogey Man."
Get the point? It's like the old joke, "Where does a 900-pound
gorilla get to play golf?" You know the answer. Tiger Woods has certainly
been a monster lately on the links, pushing his weight around to the point
of completely destroying the game of golf.
How you ask? Simple. Tiger's appetite is never satisfied. The wider
the lead, the better he plays.
I expect some day soon to hear a golf announcer on TV come out with:
"We're here at hole number two on the first day of the Artist
Formerly Known as Prince GTE Celebrity Pro-Am Desert Classic Invitational
Memorial Skins Tournament where Tiger Woods is already ahead by 40
shots. Oddly though, he's the only one left in the tournament after
all the other players mysteriously hit into a 500-foot deep sand trap
and never returned."
Yes, Tiger
has gotten so good he's even threatening the psyche of every pro golfer,
hacker and duffer trying to shoot a decent score. Grown men are stretched
out on couches talking to therapists all across America about why they
can't shoot a hole-in-one on a par-five just like Tiger does.
Forget the need to analyze their swing. Golfers are now going into psychoanalysis
trying to figure out the root cause of how they became such dismal failures
in the sport compared to Tiger Woods.
DR. FREUDCHICKEN: It seems to me young man, this deep emotional complex
of yours all started when your mother and father didn't give you proper
backswing training when you were two years old. Plus, if you ask me, you're
moving your hips too far out before you address the ball. And you really
should do something about that slice.
Because of all this, I don't think people have comprehended yet who
Tiger Woods really is or what havoc he brings. The answer isn't simple.
Has he come from another planet to take over not only Pebble Beach and
Augusta, but all of our cable TV service?
Is he some evil, fiendish doctor who throws his head back with a blood-curdling
laugh while doing bizarre lab experiments on golf balls? Or will he next
be matched in a threesome with Bill Clinton and Michael Jordan at some
tournament whereby (gasp) he'll put his arms around them and say, "Let
me show you how to work your way out of that sand trap over there. But
first, let me get a napkin."
I don't know about you, but all this scary golf stuff has me going to
bed at night with my nine-iron. If I don't stop though, my wife said I'll
be seeing "The Attack of the Fifty-Foot Lawyer."
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